CHAPTER NINETEEN
Allie
I shivered as I led Drew through the living room and to my bed. He turned and looked down at me, the muted lamplight from the bedside table making his eyes glow softly.
“Alexandra,” he murmured.
I felt my toes curl with the love he inflected into my name. I was shivering as he held me close, his body pressed to mine. I could feel how aroused he was and it was making me want him more.
“I don't think I'm going to wait,” I said wickedly as I reached up and started to unbutton his shirt. He chuckled and I let my fingers stroke his chest, loving the feeling of that hard muscled body under my fingertips.
“Good,” he whispered into my hair. “That means I don't have to wait either.”
He stroked the back of my hair and then strayed to my neck, his long fingers working their way down the skin and into the collar of my shirt. I gave a little gasp of surprise as he moved to the front buttons, starting to undress me even as I finished with his shirt.
“I see you're better at this than I am.”
He chuckled. “I have more to make me get good at it. More temptation,” he whispered, reaching in to stroke the satin of my bra. I shivered and pressed against him.
“Oh, Drew,” I murmured.
Then we were kissing and collapsing back onto the bed and the sweet slowness was giving way to a passionate urgency. He pulled off my shirt and unfastened my bra and pushed me back on the pillows, his mouth opening and closing over my nipple as I shut my eyes and let him stroke me and take me to a place of unimagined pleasure.
I was shivering as he started to unfasten my slacks and slide them off my legs. When he started stroking me through my undies I wanted to groan – it was almost painful it was so good.
“Baby,” he murmured. “I want you.”
I tried to respond but the part of my brain that could frame logical sentences was already gone, drifting on cloud of bliss as he pulled down my panties and gently fingered me.
I shook as he worked my clit between finger and thumb and then I was crying out as he brought me so close to peak that I thought I would actually dissolve.
He was stroking me and touching me, moaning and I was sighing and shivering.
He sat back and pulled off his trousers and then I was lost in bliss as he entered me. I was shaking and gasping as he thrust in me again and again and again...
He grunted and exploded even as I fell off the precipice of longing. I felt as if I was falling through endless warmth, body floating on an island of bliss in a calm sea.
We lay together, our arms round each other. It should have been exactly as it always was. But it was better. Closer.
There were no barriers between us.
***
I looked down at Allie and felt like my heart was melting. I stroked her face gently. Her eyes focused.
“Mm?” she murmured. She nestled closer to me, her hand between my pecs. I sighed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing her hair.
“Didn't mean to wake you,” I whispered softly.
“I was awake,” she said unconvincingly. “Almost,” she added as she opened an eye and caught the movement of my grin.
“You look so lovely when you sleep,” I said. “But then, you look lovely when you're awake too,” I added, feeling my body respond again as I rolled over to lie beside her.
“You look lovely too,” she murmured. She gently kissed my chin and I smiled, drawing her into my arms. Her breasts were bare and firm and they felt warm on me. I drew her closer, loving the feel of her curvy, gentle body pressed against mine. I felt safe and cared for and aroused all at once.
“You know,” I whispered as I gently rolled her over again, so that sweet ass was facing me, “I think I might just be needing some help here?”
“Oh?” she frowned, squinting at me in the tentative lamp's light.
“I think I am in danger of being far too aroused,” I murmured. “I need someone to help me relieve that.”
“Oh.” She reached out and played with me, making me wince with longing as her fingers massaged me. “Well, I think I might be able to help you.”
“Oh?” I asked playfully, feeling my poor cock aching with its need for her.
“I think I have the perfect solution for that. But you might need to roll me over,” she added. “I feel like being taken from behind.”
My cock throbbed with longing when she said that and I gritted my teeth painfully. Hell, she knew just what I liked.
“Good,” I whispered.
I rolled her onto her front and I knelt between her thighs and then slid into her. It always amazed me that it felt different from this side than from the other side, but it did. I felt my poor body take over, pulsing inside her in a way that was making the blood rush in me and making me...
I yelled as my climax almost came over me then held back, working into her until I heard her gasping and knew she was just about to come too. Then I finally, in a surging gasp, let it all out. She cried out and I collapsed.
We lay like that, her sweet ass-cheeks pressing up against me as I lay over her back. Then we rolled over and lay with her beside me.
I took a long while coming back from that drifting, sleepy place where the climax had taken me. Where she had helped me to go. It was weird, but there was something really special about being with Allie. Some kind of closeness we shared that affected me the way no other person did.
I kissed her hair.
“Baby, you make me crazy,” I murmured.
She giggled. “I could say the same thing.”
“Good,” I whispered into her hair. We lay together silently. I dozed, because when I woke up again someone had covered me with a duvet. I sighed and held Allie and went back to sleep.
Later, in the morning, we woke up with a rainy sky. I sat up, blinking.
“I suppose I should make coffee?” I asked. I kissed her hair.
“Mm. It is Monday,” she agreed. She nestled next to me and I guessed she was as reluctant to leave bed as me.
“I suppose it's only seven-thirty,” I whispered.
“I should be at work at eight-thirty. Remember?” she asked.
I nodded. “Okay, okay. I'll go and put the coffee on.”
When we were sitting in the kitchen, later, my heart in a place of peace I had never known before, I cleared my throat.
“Allie, I...” I paused. “I wanted to ask you something. It's just a plan...”
“Yes?” she frowned. She had a coffee mug between her hands, brown eyes wide.
“I wanted to ask if you...would it be possible to start a franchise, maybe?”
“A franchise?” she frowned. She hadn't expected me to say that, clearly. “Well...now that you mention it, I did think about it. A long time ago, though. I wasn't sure then if it was possible for me. If the business would work. Now I think maybe...Why?” she paused, asking me a question.
“Well,” I frowned. I wasn't sure how to put this so she wouldn't take my interest as interference. “because I want to, well, invest in something. Something outside of Bradford Transport. And I think small businesses are growing at the moment,” I said with a grin. Hell! I sounded like Reese now, or one of my uncle's other business-associates. “I wanted to ask you if...if you'd let me buy you a premises in San Diego.”
“What!” she set the coffee down so fast it splashed up, and clasped her hands to her mouth. I had never seen such excitement in anyone. She laughed.
“What?” I asked, feeling a bit confused. Well, it was nice. But it wasn't that exciting, surely?
“You...” she stood up and came around the table, and to my astonishment gave me a hug, embracing my shoulders where I sat at the kitchen-table. She gave me a big smacking kiss on my left-eyebrow. “You wonderful man! If...” She stopped.
“What?” I asked again. She looked stunned.
“I couldn't have asked for something that would be more special,” she said. She sounded choked. “You see...I wished I could come back. Be closer to you. But when I thought about leaving the bakery...it broke my heart. It means the world to me, this place. It's my own – I built it up. Now you find a way forward? A way I can have both?” She stopped, sobbing.
I felt myself grin.
She came over and kissed me again and I stood up and hugged her tight.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said. I didn't know what else to say. She hugged me and I hugged her and it seemed like the whole world stopped, held back by the safe, warm circle of our arms.
We were so happy.